Deeplinks Blog posts about Transparency

EFF recently received records from the Miami-Dade Police Department in response to a Public Records request for information on its drone program. These records provide additional insight into domestic drone use in the United States, and they reinforce the importance of public access to information on who is authorized to fly drones inside US borders.

ACLU Public Records Requests Shed New Light on Use of Cell Phone Tracking

Over the weekend, the ACLU released an exhaustive study of state and local law enforcement’s surveillance practices in regards to how often police forces are tracking citizens’ movements through their cell phones. The findings were staggering. As the New York Timesreported, the documents prove warrantless cell phone tracking “has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.”

The U.S. legislature has cybersecurity on the brain. In the coming months, Congress and the Senate will consider a confusing variety of cybersecurity bills--including H.R. 3523 (Rogers), H.R. 3674 (Lungren), S. 2105 (Lieberman), and S. 215 (McCain)--all of which purport to keep U.S.

Over the last few years, we've beenbattlinglaws that require a person arrested to give a DNA sample as part of the routine booking process. The law makes this DNA collection automatic and mandatory; law enforcement do not need a reason to collect the DNA and they can do so without a search warrant. Given the incredibly sensitive information that DNA can reveal about a person - details like a person's medical history, predisposition to disease and even sexual orientation - government access to this information must be strictly limited.